TRALANE: “Not if we’re only going to find the tomb. We’re fine as long as we don’t take anything out. Shall we?”

RONNIE: “I don’t know, that sounds like the archaeologist’s version of ‘just the tip’.”

It’s only fitting that the resurrection of That Was A Bit Mental begins with a review of a film in which something else comes back to life after a long period of death.

In this case, however, it should probably have been left in its coffin. The mummy, I mean, not this website.

Maggie Tralane is a young, attractive archaeologist whose dig team consists of ‘four’ other young, attractive women. I say ‘four’ because a fifth turns up later in the movie with no introduction whatsoever.

Her dad – a famous archaeologist who abandoned her many years ago (and is played by a guy about five years older than her) – is returning to reunite with his estranged daughter and join her and her Super Awesome Sweet 16 Archaeology Dig Crew™ on an expedition to find the ‘hidden’ tomb of Anankotep, where it’s believed there’s hidden treasure.

It turns out this tomb is about as well-hidden as the late Hugh Hefner’s love for women, as it essentially lies just off a road and has an enormous entrance you could walk a giraffe through.

The tomb’s treasures don’t exactly need Lara Croft to find them, either: they’re barely in there for 15 seconds before they find a bunch of ancient artefacts. If the Great Pyramid of Giza is one of the seven wonders of the world, the eighth wonder is how in the fuck this stuff managed to go undiscovered when it’s easier to find than your nearest Starbucks.

As you’d expect by the film’s title, the group ends up resurrecting yer man Anankotep, who begins picking them off one by one. Well, sort of.

“When that cow at the club threatened to give me a black eye, this wasn’t what I had in mind”

Resurrection Of The Mummy is a complete mess in terms of structure and pacing. I watched it twice this week – at only 72 minutes long, it’s hardly a slog – and I still lost track of who’s supposed to be where (everyone wanders off in the tomb and ends up in different rooms).

At one point one of the dig ladies says “three of our friends have already died in there”, even though there’s no possible way she could have known that with everyone having gone off in different directions.

That’s only the top of the shit dialogue iceberg, mind you. When Maggie first meets her dad, he exclaims that she looks just like his wife did, and that: “I loved her more than life itself… which means I will love you even more”.

Later, when she tells one of her fellow adventurers that she trusts him because “he’s my dad”, the response is: “Let’s hope so: you can never really know for sure who anybody is.”

Tom Cruise realised he’d walked into the wrong Mummy movie. For the second time.

The film isn’t entirely without merit. The mummy itself looks pretty cool for a low-budget film: it’s far from scary, but it’s at least well-made.

That’s the only thing, though. Apparently the entire film cost less than $750,000 to make, and it looks like most of that went on the creature, leaving about $69.99 for everything else.

The handful of scenes with blood in them are laughable, mostly consisting of characters dribbling huge blobs of thick black syrup then falling to the floor (at which point they lie there, their faces completely clean and blood-free).

Other effects are minimal: the classic ‘black eyes’ technique that’s been seen in many low-budget horror films in the past five years is present and accounted for here too.

Some normal dialogue scenes are even filmed against a green screen, including one that simply takes place in a hotel hallway. Apparently renting a hall was so out-of-budget that standing in front of a green screen and adding a fake photo of a hallway later was the way to go.

“Let’s get out of this fake hallway. As soon as the Scientologists see this film they’ll have my baws for earrings”

The whole thing culminates in an underwhelming ‘ending’ that smacks of the screenwriter falling asleep after a late night, waking up and just thinking “fuck it. THE END”.

There are plenty of mummy films that are better than Resurrection Of The Mummy (which, incidentally, was initially promoted to look like a sequel to The Mummy films starring Brendan Fraser: check the logo in the trailer below).

There are hardly any I can think of that are worse, though. A decent-looking monster aside, this one’s about as tense as a guy who’s just come out of a three-hour massage session.

You really shouldn’t be in a hurry to unwrap this one. And other mummy puns.

Resurrection Of The Mummy’s low rating earns it a place in the notorious TWABM Hall Of Shame. Click here to see what other pishfests made the grade (or, indeed, failed to).

The Lowdown

By day I review video games for a living, but by night I'm doing this blog as a bit of non-profit fun, just so I can cover my other love: horror films and other generally weird movies.

Each of my reviews come with screenshots and a trailer (or film clip) so you can hopefully judge for yourself if the film's worth tracking down.

I've also made a New Year's resolution to watch all 72 video nasty films banned by the Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK in 1984, so the "Video Nasties" list you see above this will eventually fill up with reviews of each film.

Naturally, many of these films contain scenes of graphic violence and the majority are rated 18 or 15 in the UK (while some even remained banned). If you are offended by such sights or bad language then this might not be the place for you because there may be the odd gory pic.

I hope you enjoy the reviews in this blog: all comments are welcome, as are suggestions of films you'd like to see me review (just comment under any of my reviews and let me know). If you like my stuff, feel free to subscribe using the link at the bottom of this column to get email updates.

If you want to get in touch, drop me an email at chris@thatwasabitmental.com

Thanks for reading!

Chris

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